Banshee Song
by sarsaparillia
Summary: Love, please come and haunt me always. — Shikamaru/Temari.


Well, this little story is for **chocokittens**. She requested a ShikaTema …thing, and so here it is. It's based on 'Banshee Song', by Gob.

**Disclaimer**: Not mine.

**Dedication**: To **chocokittens**__and Eleni and Erika.

---

I watch him slip into his bedroom with a tired sigh. He flicks the light out, and stand silently in the half-darkness left by the moon's luminance. He is beautiful; wild and dangerous and free, with snaking locks of hair that frame his face when let down, but most of the time, it is kept out of his face in a ponytail. He is long and lean and, annoyingly, _human_.

His eyes -so dark, so sarcastic, so _bored_- find my own dark green gaze, and casually hold it in place. An amused smirk-smile twitches on his think lips, and I feel an urge to screech at him.

I know it would shatter the glass separating us, as I want it to, but it would also doom him. My moods tend to dictate which scream I let out, and impatience usually was one that doomed those who heard it.

And I do not want to doom this human boy. His name is Shikamaru.

And he is… precious. He is not terrified by the fact that I am not the most human of the beings that love him. In fact, I am not human at all. Not in the least. I am a banshee.

And a very unconventional one, at that. I do not look the traditional (perhaps the word is _expected_…) floor length black hair and green skin sort of banshee. Actually, I mostly look human.

I am told I got this bit of outward physical appearance from my fey-prince father. But my heritage changes nothing. I am _still_ abnormally tall for a banshee, _still_ have sandy blonde hair that never grows past my shoulders, and I _still_ have slanted teal blue eyes. My skin is _still_ the colour of the inside of an almond, and I _still_ have a temper that raises some of the elder's eyebrows.

I am so far from the conventional banshee that sometimes, my mother despairs that no proper being will be able to love me. But then, my mother does not consider humans 'proper beings'.

I do not agree with her in the slightest, and so I turn my attention back to the boy who is smiling at me from behind the glass.

We stare at each other for another moment, and I feel a slight sigh of annoyance as I must sit here and wait. I cannot open the window on my own - one must invite the dangerous things in. We cannot enter on our own.

I rest my fingertips gently against the icy pane of glass (it does not bother me - I do not feel the cold), and, for a very brief moment, her aligns his hands with mine.

I swear I can feel the feel the heat of his blood running through his veins through the glass. I quietly shiver as he opens the window and pulls me in.

I know that the temperature in the room, which was previously so warm -it is summer, after all-, has dropped several degrees as soon as I am all the way in through the window. My feet do not touch the ground, and I float a half-inch off the floor.

But, despite yet another of my oddities (I have never in my life touched the earth), he pulls me close to his body, and I revel in the heat that his body naturally exudes. I am not used to such wonderful, beautiful heat.

After all, I am always cold.

"Temari…" he whispers, and I watch my name fall from his lips like water off a fountain, in something like awe.

He is such an incredible being, this boy, human or not. I am in awe that, of all the creatures in this world, human and not-so-human alike, he wants me.

His arms circle my waist, and he stares down at me. I blush, my faintly-green blood (my mother's only legacy) rushing up to stain my cheeks, and I look away. I am not normally shy, but withy him… with him, I have no choice.

He glows, most times, and when he does, I can barely look at him. This is one of those times.

He chuckles softly. "I asked to see you, Temari. How can I do that, when you hide?"

I tuck my face into the crook of his neck, and I exhale a breath of icy air. I do not need to breathe, but I feel him shudder from the temperature of the air, and I smile.

We stay like this for a moment, pressed as close to each other as we physically can be. I like being near him. It is a rare thing, that I get so close to _anyone_, let alone a human who gives off so much lovely, wonderful heat.

But I slowly pull away, and lock my gaze on his half-closed eyes. He smiles slowly at me, and whispers into the cold air, his breath coming out solid "Don't you ever speak?"

I whisper back, suddenly terrified that he may die in such cold "Of course I do. Don't close your eyes."

He nods sluggishly, but I can feel him drifting off. The human body is not built to withstand days without rest, Shikamaru especially. All he does is sleep, the silly boy.

I do not need to sleep. I have not slept in a hundred years. My duty is to deliver fate, not sleep. Sleeping is for humans.

As he slips into a deep sleep, I pull away from him. I softly place a single kiss on his forehead, and then I -quietly, carefully- slip out of his grasp. His fingers tighten briefly around mine, and I feel a strange ache in my heart. I do not know how to deal with one such as him…

I have never been in love before, I think. And I feel, oddly enough, that I would like to experience it. My mother says it is nothing but a blight, and perhaps it is, but at the same time, it is something I wish to feel.

And part of me wishes to feel it with this boy.

But I know that, one day, he will fall in love with a being of his own race, and she will be his forever. I cannot keep him from this fate.

"We are too different," I whisper into the silence.

My chest hurts, and I take one last long look into his room. His eyes snap open, and find mine once again. There is terror in his gaze - terror that I have left him. I wave, just a bit, and I force myself to vanish.

---

I have not gone far.

I am floating an inch off of his roof, my white dress lightly snagging against the shingles. I am slightly annoyed. I find it unfair that part of my dress can touch the ground, but I cannot. It is a nuisance.

My chest continues to ache, and I gently press a hand right over where a human's heart would be, slightly to the left of my chest cavity.

A great sadness rushes though me, and I am swept away by a tsunami of grief. I do not know why I feel such great sadness, but I do. I begin to shake, and so I do the only thing any banshee truly knows how to do.

I open my throat, and I _sing_.

The notes reach out deep into the night, and pull the terror of nightmares away from those I care about. I sing and sing, riding dizzying waves of melancholy notes. They come in strings, long lines of notes that I cannot ignore, no matter how much I wish to. The haunting, soft wail makes me feel physically ill.

But I know that I need to get it out now, while I have the chance, or I never will. And I know that I will never be able to look the boy who I feel that I might very well love in the face again.

And I do not want to face that possibility. I like him too much to not look him in the face again.

A crash brings me to my senses, and I peek over the side of the roof.

Shikamaru is outside on the ground, with his arms thrown open. He stares right up at me, a strange, sad smile on his lips. "I don't care that we're different! I _don't care_!"

I hesitate, but I cannot help myself. I very carefully drift down. I do not drop into his arms, as I wish I could, instead hovering just out of his reach, wondering what this may very well mean. For me, for him, for _us_.

He shakes his head. "I know that banshee song by heart, Temari. I'll never forget it. I'll never forget _you_."

"I will end up leaving," I whisper. "I always end up leaving."

He smiles again, with a slightly bitter note to it, now. "Yeah, I kind of expect that. But I still want you around, to hear you sing."

"I cannot promise you that. I simply cannot."

He shrugs, his arms still open. "Please. I just want to hear you sing, forever."

I cannot resist. I drop into his arms, my fingers warming slightly as they drink in the heat of his blood. I am greedy, I think. Greedy and terrible and evil. How can I do this to him, in good conscience?! He is not mine, I tell my chest over and over.

My chest does not agree, as I wish to haunt him forever. And there is no changing that. He is looking up at me like I am some kind of goddess.

It is a nice feeling.

I open my throat once more, and I _sing_.


End file.
